1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for measuring a body fat for a person, and more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for measuring a distribution of body fat for a human body.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the past, the weight of a person was frequently used as a factor to represent a personal health condition. But, recently, a rate of body fat for a person has becoming to be an important factor to represents the health condition for the person. Accordingly, various types of method and apparatus for measuring an amount of body fat have been developed and proposed. For instance, TOKUKAISHO No. 62-169023 discloses a technique for measuring an amount of body fat for a person by entering the personal data such as height, age, sex, etc., and measuring the weight for a person and the impedance between the extreme parts on a body of the person. In addition, TOKUHYOSHO No. 57-500900 discloses a technique for measuring the thickness of a fatty fascia. According to this technique, an ultrasonic pulse signal is applied to an animal from the rear side, and any received signal reflected from a boundary between a fatty fascia and a muscle fascia is detected. Then the time period between transmission and reception of the pulse signal is measured to determine the thickness of the fatty fascia. Furthermore, TOKUKAISHO No. 62-87139 discloses an estimating method for body fat. According to this method, subcutaneous fat on each part of a human body is measured by using an ultrasonic signal. Then the measurement is multiplied by a cross sectional area factor or a body fat estimation factor on each part of the body for producing an estimate of body fat on each part of the body. Thereafter, the individual estimates are integrated to determine whole body fat.
Recently, it has found that a risk for a person to get so called “adult (noncommunicable) diseases”, such as diabetes, arteriosclerosis, etc., may vary depending upon the distribution of fat or whether he has a subcutaneous fat or a visceral fat, irrespective of the same rate of fat he has. Therefore, a method of measuring the distribution of fat by analyzing a tomographic image of an abdomen taken by CT or MRI has been proposed.
Such method, however, is problematic in that the analysis of the image is highly complex and CT may produce an exposure of X-ray to the human body.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for measuring a distribution of body fat, that can solve the problems of the prior art.